When Chicago's Sears Tower, now Willis Tower, opened in 1973, it was the tallest building in the world. Its structure consists of nine square tubes. The tubes end at different heights, creating the stepped outline that remains so recognizable today.
These setbacks primarily answered Sears's need for floors of different sizes. They also created more corners on the upper levels. In its account of workplace history, the American furniture and workplace design company Herman Miller identifies providing more corner offices as another consideration. At the time, these offices were valuable enough for the upper floors of a skyscraper to be designed with additional corners, giving more rooms access to windows and expansive views.1
In American workplace culture, moving into a corner office has often meant reaching the upper ranks of an organization. These rooms tend to be larger and are more likely to have windows on two sides, bringing in more daylight and offering broader views. Over time, the corner office became shorthand for seniority and success.
But if we set aside the title on the door and the furnishings that announce status, what remains?
Perhaps some of the things most easily overlooked in an ordinary workplace: daylight, a view beyond the room, and a chance for attention to step back from the task at hand.
We tend to think executives have simply been given a better room. Along with that room, they may also have received more opportunities to let their attention recover.
What a Leader Uses Up in a Day
Business leaders rarely face just one difficult task. Their days are filled with questions that cannot be answered lightly.
Should we invest? Should we wait or act now? What must we hold firm on, and where can we give ground? One meeting ends, and the next decision is already waiting.
This kind of fatigue does not always feel like sleepiness. It often appears in smaller moments: rereading a page without seeing any new connections, or entering the next meeting while still thinking about the previous problem.
An executive's work is also rarely measured only by the number of tasks completed. It involves deciding what deserves attention, what can wait, and where a choice might lead the organization, even when the information is incomplete.
Leadership moves constantly between the immediate and the distant: a number on a page or a colleague's reaction at one moment; the market six months from now or the organization's direction at the next.
A distant view cannot supply a strategy. It can, however, let the body make a small shift away from close work. Looking up from a document and then returning to it may make it easier to notice a connection that the rush of work had obscured.
What grows scarce through a day of meetings, messages, and choices is the attention needed to keep thinking clearly.
The Two Things a Window Does
We usually think of a window as an opening in a building. For someone who spends long hours working indoors, it does two distinct things.
It brings daylight into the room and carries the gaze beyond the work.
As natural light changes from morning to midday to evening, it helps us remain aware of the day passing. The view outside offers a different kind of distance, giving eyes fixed on screens, papers, and phones somewhere else to rest.
Light keeps us connected to the time of day. A view gives our attention somewhere to go for a moment.
These two things often enter through the same window, but they do not work in quite the same way.
Light and the Body's Sense of Day
The architect Louis Kahn wrote, "A room is not a room without natural light."2
His words concern architecture, but they also touch on the body. Light received during the day helps regulate alertness, rest, and sleep. The question extends beyond whether a desk is bright enough to when light actually reaches our eyes.
In a study published in 2017, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center followed 109 workers in five office buildings in the United States, using wearable instruments to record light exposure and activity over a week.
Greater exposure to light that stimulated the circadian system in the morning was associated with falling asleep more easily, better sleep quality, and better alignment between light exposure and daily activity rhythms.3
The light we receive at work may therefore matter beyond the hours spent at a desk, extending into the night. Good daylight depends on direction, shading, and balance, so that light can enter without bringing excessive glare or heat.
We need enough light to read a document, and a place where we can still sense the passage of the day.
A View and a Brief Chance to Recover
Work repeatedly directs our eyes toward things close at hand: screens, papers, phones, and the person across the meeting table.
A window offers another distance.
The experience depends on more than whether a room has a window. Its orientation, whether we can actually see out from our seat, and whether the view includes sky, trees, or water all matter.
In 2025, researchers at the University of Tokyo and the University of Exeter brought together twenty-eight studies of nature viewed through real windows. Overall, views of trees, mountains, water, or gardens were associated with better psychological and physiological outcomes.4
A view does not require us to stop working, leave the building, or schedule a break. After a phone call, before a meeting, or while an idea is still taking shape, it gives the eyes somewhere to settle for a moment.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley also conducted a controlled experiment in a full-scale office environment laboratory. The eighty-six undergraduate and graduate students reported more positive emotions in the condition with a window and an outdoor view, and performed slightly better on tests of working memory and selective attention.5
A window can make a brief pause possible within the working day. We can remain at our desk while our attention moves outward, then returns.
Beyond light and views, the dimensions of a room may also influence how we approach a problem.
A 2007 study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of British Columbia found that higher ceilings could encourage more relational and abstract processing, while lower ceilings could draw attention toward individual items and specific details. The findings depended in part on people noticing the ceiling height. This is sometimes described as the "cathedral effect."6
In 1943, discussing the rebuilding of Britain's House of Commons, Winston Churchill said, "We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us."7 He was considering how the chamber's form affected debate. In today's office, we can ask a related question: what kinds of attention and judgment are encouraged by the spaces we have made?
What Gives the Corner Office Its Value
Returning to the corner office, its value may lie partly in what it brings together, beyond its location or exclusivity.
Daylight enters the room. The gaze can leave the desk and reach farther away. Between stretches of work, a person can remain aware of time and the world outside.
For someone who must repeatedly judge, choose, and take responsibility for the consequences, these conditions can help sustain the work of thinking.
In many traditional offices, the spaces closest to the exterior walls, with the best access to light and views, were divided into private rooms for managers. Daylight and an outward view became rewards for moving up the hierarchy.
A good workplace can make those conditions more widely available. Meeting rooms, reading areas, and places to pause can be positioned near windows, allowing light and views to reach beyond a small number of private offices.
We often attribute a person's judgment entirely to ability, experience, and character. Yet every decision is made by a person who may already have been working for hours, in a particular room.
The value of the best office may lie in how it brings light and views into work, giving tired attention a chance to return.
The view outside will not make the decision for us.
But it may help us come back to the decision in front of us.